Archive for the ‘Curriculum’ Category

The common understanding of basic terms and ideas is often amiss. Sometimes that’s innocuous; sometimes it’s not.

Many in the field of classical education tout what they call the Socratic Method, by which they seem to mean a process that draws the student to the correct conclusion by means of a sequence of leading questions. The end is predetermined; for good or ill, the method is primarily a rhetorical strategy to convince students that the answer was their own idea all along, thus achieving “buy-in”, so to speak. As rhetorical strategies go, it’s not really so bad.

Is it also good pedagogical technique? I am less certain. The short-term advantage of persuading a student that something is his or her own idea is materially compromised by the fact that (on these terms, at least) the method is fundamentally disingenuous. If the questioner feigns ignorance, while all the while knowing precisely where these questions must lead, perceptive students, at least, will eventually realize that they are being played. Some may not resent that; others certainly will, and will seek every opportunity to disengage themselves from a process that they rightly consider a pretense.

Whether it’s valid pedagogically or not, however, we mustn’t claim that it’s Socratic. Socrates did indeed proceed by asking questions. He asked them incessantly. He was annoying, in fact — a kind of perpetual three-year-old, asking “why?” after each answer, challenging every supposition, and never satisfied with the status quo or with any piece or accepted wisdom. It can be wearying to respond to this game; harried parents through the years have learned to shut down such interrogation: “Because I said so!” The Athenians shut Socrates’ questioning down with a cup of hemlock.

But the fact is that the annoying three-year-old is probably the most capable learning agent in the history of the world. The unfettered inquiry into why and how — about anything and everything — is the very stuff of learning. It’s why young children learn sophisticated language at such a rate. “Because I said so,” is arguably the correct answer to “Why must I do what you say?” But as an answer to a question about the truth, rather than as the justification of a command, it’s entirely inadequate, and even a three-year-old knows the difference. If we consider it acceptable, we are surrendering our credentials as learners or as teachers.

The difference between the popular notion of this so-called Socratic method and the method Socrates actually follows in the Platonic dialogues is that Socrates apparently had no fixed goal in view. He was always far more concerned to dismantle specious knowledge than to supply a substitute in its place. He was willing to challenge any conclusions, and the endpoint of most of his early dialogues was not a settled agreement, but merely an admission of humility: “Well, golly, Socrates. I’m stuck. I guess I really have no idea what I was talking about.” Socrates thought that this was a pretty good beginning; indeed, he claimed that his one advantage over other presumed experts was that he at least knew that he didn’t know anything, while they, just as ignorant in fact, believed that they knew something.

Taken on this view, the Socratic method is really a fairly poor way of training someone. If you are teaching people to be technicians of some sort or other, you want them to submit to the program and take instruction. It’s arguably not the best tool for practical engineering, medicine, or the law. (There is now a major push in resistance to using any kind of real Socratic method in law school, for example.)

But training is precisely not education. Education is where the true Socratic process comes into its own. It’s about the confrontation of minds, the clarification of definitions, and the discovery and testing of new ideas. It’s a risky way of teaching. It changes the underlying supposition of the enterprise. It can no longer be seen merely as a one-way download of information from master to pupil. In its place it commends to us a common search for the truth. At this point, the teacher is at most the first among equals.

This makes — and will continue to make — a lot of people uncomfortable. It makes many teachers uncomfortable, because in the process they risk losing control — not necessarily behavioral control of a class, but their identity (often carefully groomed and still more zealously protected) as oracles whose word should not be questioned. It opens their narrative and their identity to questioning, and may put them on the defensive.

It makes students uncomfortable too — especially those who are identified as “good” students — the ones who dot every “i” and cross every “t”, and never seem to step out of line or challenge the teacher’s authority. These are the ones likeliest, in a traditional high school, to be valedictorians and materially successful, according to a few recent studies — but not the ones likeliest to make real breakthrough contributions. (The recent book Barking up the Wrong Tree by Eric Barker has some interesting things to say about this: one can read a precis of his contentions here. Barker’s work is based at least in part on Karen Arnold’s Lives of Promise, published in 1995, and discussed here.)

In practical terms, education is a mixed bag.

There is a place for training. We need at least some of the “download” kind of instruction. Basic terms need to be learned before they can be manipulated; every discipline has its grammar. I really do know Latin, for example, better than most of my students, and, at least most of the time, what I say is likelier to be correct. But my saying so neither constitutes nor assures correctness, and if a student corrects me, then, assuming he or she is right, it should be my part to accept that correction graciously, not to insist on a falsehood because I can prevail on the basis of my presumed status. If the correction is wrong, the course of charity is also to assume good intention on the student’s part, and clarify the right answer in my turn. Either way, there is no room for “alternative facts”. There is truth, and there is falsehood. The truth is always the truth, irrespective of who articulates it, and it — not I or my student — deserves the primary respect. We must serve the truth, not the other way around.

At some point in their education, though, students should also be invited to get into the ring with each other and with the teacher, to state their cases with conviction, and back them up with reasoned argument and well-documented facts. If they get knocked down, they need to learn to get back up again and keep on engaging in the process. It hurts a lot less if one realizes that it’s not one’s own personal worth that’s at stake: it’s the truth that is slowly coming to light as we go along. That’s the experience — and the thrill of the chase that it actually entails — that constitutes the deeper part of education. That’s what the true Socratic method was — and still should be — about.

Two modes of learning are prevalent today in colleges, especially — the lecture course and the seminar. In the lecture, the students are, for the most part, passive recipients of information. The agent is the lecturer, who delivers course content in a one-way stream. It’s enshrined in hundreds of years of tradition, and it has its place. But a student who never moves beyond that will emerge more or less free of actual education. The seminar, on the other hand, is about the dialectic — the back-and-forth of the process. It requires the student to become, for a time, the teacher, to challenge authority not because it is authority but because truth has the higher claim. Here disagreement is not toxic: it’s the life blood of the process, and it’s lifegiving for the student.

At Scholars Online, we have chiefly chosen to rely on something like the seminar approach for our live chats. We have, we think, very capable teachers, and there are some things that they need to impart to the students. But to large measure, these can be done by web-page “lectures”, which a student can read on his or her own time. The class discussion, however, is reciprocal, and that reciprocity of passionately-held ideas is what fires a true love of learning. It’s about the exchange — the push and pull, honoring the truth first and foremost. It may come at a cost: in Socrates’s case it certainly did. But it’s about awakening the life of the mind, without which there is no education: schooling without real engagement merely produces drones.

We’ve been busy this year, and that’s taken its toll on publishing blog articles. Besides reviewing our options for accreditation, upgrading the Moodle and its theme, finding and supporting teachers and teaching our own classes, we were faced, as some of you know, with serious medical challenges that absorbed huge amounts of time and emotional energy. It didn’t help that the political scene was also one of chaos and increasing incivility tearing at the fabric of our nation.

In the quiet spaces when there was time, we’ve done a lot of thinking about why Scholars Online exists, and what the point of classical Christian education really is. In its origins, the liberal arts of the quadrivium and trivium were the foundation of the education that was required, not to make men free, as some have supposed, but to equip free men to meet their primary duty: to act wisely and responsibly as citizens of their communities, whether a small polis or a great empire. To this end, the citizens of Greece and Rome needed to discern carefully to discover the truth, analyze many disparate factors closely to determine the likely outcomes of possible actions, and argue clearly to convince others to adopt their plan of action for the best outcome.

This passion to know the truth was part of the Greek outlook, and part of the Judeo-Christian tradition as well, since knowing what is true is a way of knowing God. Knowing the truth sets us free, Christ says: we no longer need blindly accept what we are told by those around us, or be swayed by the emotions of the moment, but can choose for ourselves how to serve God. We can be ourselves, and our relationships with others will have a firm foundation.

St. Paul notes that among the gifts of the Sprit are wisdom, understanding, counsel, knowledge, and wonder, all of them dependent on knowing the truth and being able to act on it wisely. But the truth is often complex; we need help to discern it and we need skill with words to communicate what we’ve learned clearly, precisely, and persuasively.

The early Christian fathers were quick to recognize the benefits of classical philosophy in searching for the truth, even though the discipline originated in what they considered a pagan people. If divine inspiration was God’s gift to the Israelites, St. Clement argued, then philosophy was God’s gift to the Greeks. The tools of the Greek philosophers became essential tools for the Christian, providing ways to discern which doctrines were true, which actions wise.

And such persuasion is convincing, by which those that love learning admit the truth; so that philosophy does not ruin life by being the originator of false practices and base deeds, although some have calumniated it, though it be the clear image of truth, a divine gift to the Greeks; nor does it drag us away from the faith, as if we were bewitched by some delusive art, but rather, so to speak, by the use of an ampler circuit, obtains a common exercise demonstrative of the faith. Further, the juxtaposition of doctrines, by comparison, saves the truth, from which follows knowledge. Philosophy came into existence, not on its own account, but for the advantages reaped by us from knowledge, we receiving a firm persuasion of true perception, through the knowledge of things comprehended by the mind. (Clement of Alexandria, Stromata, Book I, Chapter 2).

To comprehension of the truth, the Christian fathers added charity and compassion in action. One could act from knowledge of the truth but still promote despair, fear, hatred, and chaos. The fruits of Christian actions can be identified because they promote peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. (Galations 5:22-23). Combined with tools that let us discern the truth, these criteria help us determine how we should respond to any situation.

So here’s the goal of Scholars Online, not merely to teach students the philosophy of the past, but to help them determine how to act in the present:

To inspire students with charity; to develop their acumen by close interpretation of words, arguments, and ideas; and to cultivate precise expression by sharing our love of the written word—the medium through which the most critical ideas have been conveyed throughout the generations.

We’ve been busy this year, and that’s taken its toll on publishing blog articles. Besides reviewing our options for accreditation, upgrading the Moodle and its theme, finding and supporting teachers and teaching our own classes, we were faced, as some of you know, with serious medical challenges that absorbed huge amounts of time and emotional energy. It didn’t help that the political scene was also one of chaos and increasing incivility tearing at the fabric of our nation.

In the quiet spaces when there was time, we’ve done a lot of thinking about why Scholars Online exists, and what the point of classical Christian education really is. In its origins, the liberal arts of the quadrivium and trivium were the foundation of the education that was required, not to make men free, as some have supposed, but to equip free men to meet their primary duty: to act wisely and responsibly as citizens of their communities, whether a small polis or a great empire. To this end, the citizens of Greece and Rome needed to discern carefully to discover the truth, analyze many disparate factors closely to determine the likely outcomes of possible actions, and argue clearly to convince others to adopt their plan of action for the best outcome.

This passion to know the truth was part of the Greek outlook, and part of the Judeo-Christian tradition as well, since knowing what is true is a way of knowing God. Knowing the truth sets us free, Christ says: we no longer need blindly accept what we are told by those around us, or be swayed by the emotions of the moment, but can choose for ourselves how to serve God. We can be ourselves, and our relationships with others will have a firm foundation.

St. Paul notes that among the gifts of the Sprit are wisdom, understanding, counsel, knowledge, and wonder (1 Corinthians 12: 7-11), all of them dependent on knowing the truth and being able to act on it wisely. But the truth is often complex; we need help to discern it and we need skill with words to communicate what we’ve learned clearly, precisely, and persuasively.

The early Christian fathers were quick to recognize the benefits of classical philosophy in searching for the truth, even though the discipline originated in what they considered a pagan people. If divine inspiration was God’s gift to the Israelites, St. Clement argued, then philosophy was God’s gift to the Greeks. The tools of the Greek philosophers became essential tools for the Christian, providing ways to discern which doctrines were true, which actions wise.

And such persuasion is convincing, by which those that love learning admit the truth; so that philosophy does not ruin life by being the originator of false practices and base deeds, although some have calumniated it, though it be the clear image of truth, a divine gift to the Greeks; nor does it drag us away from the faith, as if we were bewitched by some delusive art, but rather, so to speak, by the use of an ampler circuit, obtains a common exercise demonstrative of the faith. Further, the juxtaposition of doctrines, by comparison, saves the truth, from which follows knowledge. Philosophy came into existence, not on its own account, but for the advantages reaped by us from knowledge, we receiving a firm persuasion of true perception, through the knowledge of things comprehended by the mind. (Clement of Alexandria, Stromata, Book I, Chapter 2).

To comprehension of the truth, the Christian fathers added charity and compassion in action. One could act from knowledge of the truth but still promote despair, fear, hatred, and chaos. The fruits of Christian actions can be identified because they promote peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. (Galatians 5:22-23). Combined with tools that let us discern the truth, these criteria help us determine how we should respond to any situation.

So here’s the goal of Scholars Online, not merely to teach students the philosophy of the past, but to help them determine how to act in the present:

To inspire students with charity; to develop their acumen by close interpretation of words, arguments, and ideas; and to cultivate precise expression by sharing our love of the written word—the medium through which the most critical ideas have been conveyed throughout the generations.

People tout many different goals in the educational enterprise, but not all goals are created equal. They require a good deal of sifting, and some should be discarded. Many of them seem to be either obvious on the one hand or, on the other, completely wrong-headed (to my way of thinking, at least).

One of the most improbable goals one could posit, however, would be failure. Yet failure — not as an end (and hence not a final goal), but as an essential and salutary means to achieving a real education — is the subject of Jessica Lahey’s The Gift of Failure (New York, HarperCollins, 2015). In all fairness, I guess I was predisposed to like what she had to say, since she’s a teacher of both English and Latin, but I genuinely think that it is one of the more trenchant critiques I have read of modern pedagogy and the child-rearing approaches that have helped shape it, sometimes with the complicity of teachers, and sometimes in spite of their best efforts.

Christe first drew my attention to an extract of her book at The Atlantic here. When we conferred after reading it, we discovered that we’d both been sufficiently impressed that we’d each ordered a copy of the book.

Lahey calls into question, first and foremost, the notion that the student (whether younger or older) really needs to feel that he or she is doing well at all stages of the process. Feeling good about your achievement, whether or not it really amounts to anything, is not in fact a particularly useful thing. That seems common-sensical to me, but it has for some time gone against the grain of a good deal of teaching theory. Instead, Lahey argues, failing — and in the process learning to get up again, and throw oneself back into the task at hand — is not only beneficial to a student, but essential to the formation of any kind of adult autonomy. Insofar as education is not merely about achieving a certain number of grades and scores, but about the actual formation of characer, this is (I think) spot-on.

A good deal of her discussion is centered around the sharply diminishing value of any system of extrinsic reward — that is, anything attached secondarily to the process of learning — be it grades on a paper or a report card, a monetary payoff from parents for good grades, or the often illusory goal of getting into a good college. The only real reward for learning something, she insists, is knowing it. She has articulated better than I have a number of things I’ve tried to express before. (On the notion that the reason to learn Latin and Greek was not as a stepping-stone to something else, but really to know Latin and Greek, see here and here. On allowing the student freedom to fail, see here. On grades, see here.) Education should be — and arguably can only be — about learning, not about grades, and about mastery, not about serving time, passing tests so that one can be certified or bumped along to something else. In meticulous detail, Lahey documents the uselessness of extrinsic rewards at almost every level — not merely because they fail to achieve the desired result, but because they drag the student away from engagement in learning, dull the mind and sensitivity, and effectively promote the ongoing infantilization of our adolescents — making sure that they are never directly exposed to the real and natural consequences of either their successes or their failures. Put differently, unless you can fail, you can’t really succeed either.

Rather than merely being content to denounce the inadequacies of modern pedagogy, Ms. Lahey has concrete suggestions for how to turn things around. She honestly reports how she has had to do so herself in her ways of dealing with her own children. The book is graciously honest, and I enthusiastically recommend it to parents and teachers at every level. If I haven’t convinced you this far, though, at least read the excerpt linked above. The kind of learning she’s talking about — engaged learning tied to a real love of learning, coupled with the humility to take the occasional setback not as an invalidation of oneself but as a challenge to grow into something tougher — is precisely what we’re hoping to cultivate at Scholars Online. If that’s what you’re looking for, I hope we can provide it.

Everywhere we see extravagant public handwringing about education. Something is not working. The economy seems to be the symptom that garners the most attention, and there are people across the political spectrum who want to fix it directly; but most seem to agree that education is at least an important piece of the solution. We must produce competitive workers for the twenty-first century, proclaim the banners and headlines; if we do not, the United States will become a third-world nation. We need to get education on the fast track — education that is edgy, aggressive, and technologically savvy. Whatever else it is, it must be up to date, it must be fast, and it must be modern. It must not be what we have been doing.

I’m a Latin teacher. If I were a standup comedian, that would be considered a punch line. In addition to Latin, I teach literature — much of it hundreds of years old. I ask students, improbably, to see it for what it itself is, not just for what they can use it for themselves. What’s the point of that? one might ask. Things need to be made relevant to them, not the other way around, don’t they?

Being a Latin teacher, however (among other things), I have gone for a number of years now to the Summer Institute of the American Classical League, made up largely of Latin teachers across the country. One might expect them to be stubbornly resistant to these concerns — or perhaps blandly oblivious. That’s far from the case. Every year, in between the discussions of Latin and Greek literature and history, there are far more devoted to pedagogy: how to make Latin relevant to the needs of the twenty-first century, how to advance the goals of STEM education using classical languages, and how to utilize the available technology in the latest and greatest ways. What that technology does or does not do is of some interest, but the most important thing for many there is that it be new and catchy and up to date. Only that way can we hope to engage our ever-so-modern students.

The accrediting body that reviewed our curricular offerings at Scholars Online supplies a torrent of exortation about preparing our students for twenty-first century jobs by providing them with the latest skills. It’s obvious enough that the ones they have now aren’t doing the trick, since so many people are out of work, and so many of those who are employed seem to be in dead-end positions. The way out of our social and cultural morass lies, we are told, in a focus on the STEM subjects: Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math. Providing students with job skills is the main business of education. They need to be made employable. They need to be able to become wealthy, because that’s how our society understands, recognizes, and rewards worth. We pay lip service, but little else, to other standards of value.

The Sarah D. Barder Fellowship organization to which I also belong is a branch of the Johns Hopkins University Center for Talented Youth. It’s devoted to gifted and highly gifted education. At their annual conference they continue to push for skills, chiefly in the scientific and technical areas, to make our students competitive in the emergent job market. The highly gifted ought to be highly employable and hence earn high incomes. That’s what it means, isn’t it?

The politicians of both parties have contrived to disagree about almost everything, but they seem to agree about this. In January of 2014, President Barack Obama commented, “…I promise you, folks can make a lot more, potentially, with skilled manufacturing or the trades than they might with an art history degree. Now, nothing wrong with an art history degree — I love art history. So I don’t want to get a bunch of emails from everybody. I’m just saying you can make a really good living and have a great career without getting a four-year college education as long as you get the skills and the training that you need.”

From the other side of the aisle, Florida Governor Rick Scott said, “If I’m going to take money from a citizen to put into education then I’m going to take that money to create jobs. So I want that money to go to degrees where people can get jobs in this state. Is it a vital interest of the state to have more anthropologists? I don’t think so.”

They’re both, of course, right. The problem isn’t that they have come up with the wrong answer. It isn’t even that they’re asking the wrong question. It’s that they’re asking only one of several relevant questions. They have drawn entirely correct conclusions from their premises. A well-trained plumber with a twelfth-grade education (or less) can make more money than I ever will as a Ph.D. That has been obvious for some time now. If I needed any reminding, the last time we required a plumber’s service, the point was amply reinforced: the two of them walked away in a day with about what I make in a month. It’s true, too, that a supply of anthropologists is not, on the face of things, serving the “compelling interests” of the state of Florida (or any other state, probably). In all fairness, President Obama said that he wasn’t talking about the value of art history as such, but merely its value in the job market. All the same, that he was dealing with the job market as the chief index of an education’s value is symptomatic of our culture’s expectations about education and its understanding of what it’s for.

The politicians haven’t created the problem; but they have bought, and are now helping to articulate further, the prevalent assessment of what ends are worth pursuing, and, by sheer repetition and emphasis, crowding the others out. I’m not at all against STEM subjects, nor am I against technologically competent workers. I use and enjoy technology. I am not intimidated by it. I teach online. I’ve been using the Internet for twenty-odd years. I buy a fantastic range of products online. I programmed the chat software I use to teach Latin and Greek, using PHP, JavaScript, and mySQL. I’m a registered Apple Developer. I think every literate person should know not only some Latin and Greek, but also some algebra and geometry. I even think, when going through Thucydides’ description of how the Plataeans determined the height of the wall the Thebans had built around their city, “This would be so much easier if they just applied a little trigonometry.” Everyone should know how to program a computer. Those are all good things, and help us understand the world we’re living in, whether we use them for work or not.

But they are not all that we need to know. So before you quietly determine that what I’m offering is just irrelevant, allow me to bring some news from the past. If that sounds contradictory, bear in mind that it’s really the only kind of news there is. All we know about anything at all, we know from the past, whether recent or distant. Everything in the paper or on the radio news is already in the past. Every idea we have has been formulated based on already-accumulated evidence and already-completed ratiocination. We may think we are looking at the future, but we aren’t: we’re at most observing the trends of the recent past and hypothesizing about what the future will be like. What I have to say is news, not because it’s about late-breaking happenings, but because it seems not to be widely known. The unsettling truth is that if we understood the past better and more deeply, we might be less sanguine about trusting the apparent trends of a year or even a decade as predictors of the future. They do not define our course into the infinite future, or even necessarily the short term — be they about job creation, technical developments, or weather patterns. We are no more able to envision the global culture and economy of 2050 than the independent bookseller in 1980 could have predicted that a company named Amazon would put him out of business by 2015.

So here’s my news: if the United States becomes a third-world nation (a distinct possibility), it will not be because of a failure in our technology, or even in our technological education. It will be because, in our headlong pursuit of what glitters, we have forgotten how to differentiate value from price: we have forgotten how to be a free people. Citizenship — not merely in terms of law and government, but the whole spectrum of activities involved in evaluating and making decisions about what kind of people to be, collectively and individually — is not a STEM subject. Our ability to articulate and grasp values, and to make reasoned and well-informed decisions at the polls, in the workplace, and in our families, cannot be transmitted by a simple, repeatable process. Nor can achievement in citizenship be assessed simply, or, in the short term, accurately at all. The successes and failures of the polity as a whole, and of the citizens individually, will remain for the next generation to identify and evaluate — if we have left them tools equal to the task. Our human achievement cannot be measured by lines of code, by units of product off the assembly line, or by GNP. Our competence in the business of being human cannot be certified like competence in Java or Oracle (or, for that matter, plumbing). Even a success does not necessarily hold out much prospect of employment or material advantage, because that was never what it was about in the first place. It offers only the elusive hope that we will have spent our stock of days with meaning — measured not by our net worth when we die, but by what we have contributed when we’re alive. The questions we encounter in this arena are not new ones, but rather old ones. If we lose sight of them, however, we will have left every child behind, for technocracy can offer nothing to redirect our attention to what matters.

Is learning this material of compelling interest to the state? That depends on what you think the state is. The state as a bureaucratic organism is capable of getting along just fine with drones that don’t ask any inconvenient questions. We’re already well on the way to achieving that kind of state. Noam Chomsky, ever a firebrand and not a man with whom I invariably agree, trenchantly pointed out, “The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum — even encourage the more critical and dissident views. That gives people the sense that there’s free thinking going on, while all the time the presuppositions of the system are being reinforced by the limits put on the range of the debate.” He’s right. If we are to become unfree people, it will be because we gave our freedom away in exchange for material security or some other ephemeral reward — an illusion of safety and welfare, and those same jobs that President Obama and Governor Scott have tacitly accepted as the chief — or perhaps the only — real objects of our educational system. Whatever lies outside that narrow band of approved material is an object of ridicule.

If the state is the people who make it up, the question is subtly but massively different. Real education may not be in the compelling interest of the state qua state, but it is in the compelling interest of the people. It’s the unique and unfathomably complex amalgam that each person forges out of personal reflection, of coming to understand one’s place in the family, in the nation, and in the world. It is not primarily practical, and we should eschew it altogether, if our highest goal were merely to get along materially. The only reason to value it is the belief that there is some meaning to life beyond one’s bank balance and material comfort. I cannot prove that there is, and the vocabulary of the market has done its best to be rid of the idea. But I will cling to it while I live, because I think it’s what makes that life worthwhile.

Technical skills — job skills of any sort — are means, among others, to the well-lived life. They are even useful means in their place, and everyone should become as competent as possible. But as they are means, they are definitionally not ends in themselves. They can be mistakenly viewed as ends in themselves, and sold to the credulous as such, but the traffic is fraudulent, and it corrupts the good that is being conveyed. Wherever that sale is going on, it’s because the real ends are being quietly bought up by those with the power to keep them out of our view in their own interest.

Approximately 1900 years ago, Tacitus wrote of a sea change in another civilization that had happened not by cataclysm but through inattention to what really mattered. Describing the state of Rome at the end of the reign of Augustus, he wrote: “At home all was calm. The officials carried the old names; the younger men had been born after the victory of Actium; most even of the elder generation, during the civil wars; few indeed were left who had seen the Republic. It was thus an altered world, and of the old, unspoilt Roman character not a trace lingered.” It takes but a single generation to forget the work of ages.

But perhaps that’s an old story, and terribly out of date. I teach Latin, Greek, literature, and history, after all.

Congratulations to Mrs. Mary Catherine Lavissière’s students Katie Cruse, Alana Ross, Micah Wittenberg, and Moriah Wittenberg! These four Scholars Online students placed with honors in the National French Test Le Grand Concours 2015. The test is offered annually by the American Association of Teachers of French to identify and recognize students achieving high proficiency in the French language.

Madame Lavissière offers courses in both French and Spanish through Scholars Online. See our Modern Languages course descriptions for more information. Update on Summer Session Courses for 2015

We’ve added several new courses for the summer session, which runs from June 8-August 21, 2015 (individual courses may span different periods within the session, so check your course description for exact start dates). Most summer classes are chances for students to build new skills in fun but still useful ways. Click on the course name to see descriptions of class schedules and costs, and on syllabus links to see detailed course content and assignments. Enrollment must be completed by May 31 to ensure placement in the course, and payment in full is due before students can attend chat sessions. Enrollments received after May 31 may not be processed in time for students to attend the first sessions of their course.

Explore the many facets of J.R.R. Tolkien’s creation in Looking at Middle-earth. Discussions will focus on Tolkien’s world-building, use of language, his theology of “subcreation”, and his work as a philologist. Students are expected to have read The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings.

Sample Shakespeare’s comedy, tragedy, and history plays, including Twelfth Night, As You Like It, The Taming of the Shrew,The Merchant of Venice, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, King Lear, Julius Caesar, Romeo and Juliet, and Richard II in Summer Shakespeare I. Students taking Scholars Online’s literature series, supplemented with Summer Shakespeare II and III, have the opportunity to study and discuss all of Shakespeare’s plays. [See the Full Syllabus for details.]

Gain practical writing skills with Molding Your Prose (based on an idea suggested to Dr. Bruce McMenomy by Mary McDermott Shideler). Learn to organize your ideas and improve your dialectic skills in Molding your Argument. Both of these popular courses requires short weekly writing exercises, with students analyzing each others’ work to learn to identify and improve their own writing.

Jump start your academic year Physics course with an overview of key theories and concepts in Introduction to Physics, a survey of the fundamental concepts of classical mechanics and modern physics, and gain essential analysis and problem-solving skills. Students planning to take the combined AP Physics 1 and 2 course will be able to count lab work from this course toward their AP lab requirements. [Full syllabus]

NEW COURSE! In The Age of Reagan, discover how the events and decisions of the Reagan administration have shaped current political, religious, economic, and environmental policies. Students opting for the media studies component of this course will also examine how movies, TV, and ads portray cultural messages (parental guide available in the full syllabus).

Enrollment and Registration Deadlines

It’s hard to believe that it is already August. Open enrollment for academic year courses continues through August 22, and full tuition and fees are due by August 29. This applies even if you are using the installment option, unless you make arrangements with the accounts manager. While we may accept enrollments and payments after that date for some courses (pending teacher approval), any delays in processing account information could prevent students from being admitted to chat sessions—so please complete registration and enrollment as soon as possible!

Each new student with a paid membership will notification of his or her temporary password at the student’s registered email address. Please make sure that these notices are not being filtered to junk mail!

Scholarship Deadlines

The Scholars Online Board of Directors allocates part of our annual budget to our scholarship fund, as well as all income from our bookstore affiliation with Amazon.com. Families may be awarded waivers up to 50% of tuition for demonstrated need, including job loss, medical expenses, or other family emergencies.

Scholarships are granted on a case-by-case basis for tuition assistance when students would otherwise be unable to take courses due to job loss, medical expenses, or other family emergencies. Contact accounts@scholarsonine.org as soon as possible if you wish information about applying for scholarships for our 2014-2015 courses. Some scholarship funds for this year have already been allocated. Final decisions on remaining scholarship distributions will be made August 15. Please consider your request prayerfully; our resources are limited and once distributed, are not available for other families.

Moodle Access

We will be installing and testing a long-delayed upgrade to the Moodle software starting August 11. Although we will attempt to limit outages to evenings after 6pm PDT or weekends, access may be restricted at other times as well. Students submitting over-the-summer examinations or lab work may need to adjust their schedules to complete all assigned work by their course deadlines.

Students and families who are not returning to Scholars Online for the fall will lose access to the Moodle on August 31. If you need to download assignments or scores for your records, please do so prior to that date. Families will continue to have access to transcripts and invoice records through the Account Management Centers.

We’ve had a number of inquiries about our AP programs at Scholars Online.

While we endeavor to help our students gain recognition for their work through the AP program where appropriate, we have focussed on creating a curriculum that meets our primary mission: to provide a rigorous classical Christian education for our students. There are cases where our mission and the AP program are at odds.

To use the term “AP Course” and offer AP credit requires approval of the course syllabus by the College Board review team. In some cases, Scholars Online teachers have elected to create and submit a course syllabus for review (a lengthy process, for which the teacher does not receive remuneration, and one which has to be repeated every 2-3 years at the whim of the College Board). Three of our science courses have received official approval in the past to grant AP credit on school transcripts, providing students complete all required lab work. Students must still take the AP exam for exam credit; some elect to do so and others do not.

For some of our other courses, the teachers have determined that the College Board requirements for the delivery of material are in fact not in the best interests of students following a classical Christian education curriculum with its emphasis on close analysis and critical thinking. While these courses meet and exceed requirements to cover specific material and topics in preparation for the AP and SAT subject exams (and our students do very well on these exams), we cannot grant official AP credit for these courses. Again, students must take the AP exam for exam credit.

Even when students have AP courses on their transcript, or score well on the AP exams, individual colleges and universities differ widely in how they use AP credit and AP exam results for admission or course credit, and that there is a growing controversy over the usefulness of the College Board testing program. If you are a parent of students who will not be attending college for several years yet, you should be aware that the entire AP/SAT/CLEP/ACT exam system is changing, and this may affect your choice of courses and how you validate your students’ work.

In the list below, links to the entire SO sequence are given, so that you may see how each individual course fits into the overall Scholars Online curriculum.

As always, parents should consult with our independent curriculum advisor, Mrs. LaJuana Decker, with any questions on whether our courses are appropriate for their students. She may be reached at acadsupport@scholarsonine.org.